Year: 2016 (page 27 of 38)

I have been doing this writing thing professionally for — *coughs into hand* — about 16 years. (And, for another fun number, in a few weeks I turn 40. Holy shit who let that happen?) And if there exists one thing I can tell you with great certainty, it’s that you will one day have to deal with the inevitability of burnout.

Now, burnout is not writer’s block. Writer’s block exists, but it’s not unique to writers and we shouldn’t call it writer’s block because that gives it too much power. Burnout is also not depression. Depression is a lying parasite that lives in your heart and while I am not a psychoparasitologist, I can tell you that treating depression as if it is burnout is a very good way to become even more depressed. It’s like trying to fight quicksand as if it is seawater — you can swim in seawater, but in quicksand, you’ll just kick and flop and sink further into its grip.

Burnout is this, at least for me:

You write because you love it, and then eventually you write because you want it to make you money. And maybe it does make you money: a little, a middle, a lot. You work very hard at writing, but writing is of course never just writing. Writing is editing. Writing is rewriting. Writing is marketing and promo and dealing with agents and editors and publishing and gazing into the swirling vortex of hate-machinery that governs this and really all industries, and the writing becomes tainted in a way by all these other things. It’s as if your love of writing was a cool-ass cigarette boat from 1980s-era Miami Vice: lean and fast and cutting waves like a spear flung from Poseidon’s briny hand. But then over time, all this other stuff gathers on your hull like barnacles. Your rig gets rusty. Boggy. Suddenly you feel like a tugboat dragging a garbage scow through a sloppy tide of medical waste. You’re asking yourself, am I even in the water anymore? Am I beached? Am I on drydock? Is this forever?

A publishing deal goes south? More barnacles.

A book you write lands on shelves and it feels like nobody buys it? More rust.

Every bad review is a remora fish clinging to your side. Every royalty statement that reminds you about unearned advances is concrete drying on your boots. It’s all boat anchors and caked-on mud and an engine that gutters and grinds before it starts in the morning.

Burnout is a kind of creative constipation. You get tired of doing it. The work feels only like work. Clarity seems impossible. The stress outweighs the joy.

You’ll hit it. You might hit it early in your career trying to get published. You might hit it in the middle of your career after all the business baggage has been slung over your shoulders. If you’re me, you might bump up against it again and again with the standard peaks and valleys of the authorial life. I periodically run parallel to burnout like someone running alongside the ocean — if I turn my head just so I can see the shark fins, I can see the rippling lines of a threatening undertow, I can see the SURLY OCTOPUSES OF ENNUI THREATENING TO ENROBE ME IN THEIR TENTACLES AND DROWN ME IN THE BUBBLING DEPTHS OF MY OWN LASSITUDE.

Question is, what do I do about the OCTOPUSES OF ENNUI?

As my nemesis Jaye points out, you’ve got options. Nab a new hobby. Take up yoga or meditation. I like photography, as you might see with my Macro Monday experiments. Take a walk. Take a vacation. Have an adventure. Vent frustrations with fellow writers (seriously, this can be a huge help). Punch a punching bag painted to look like the politician of your choice.

All of those are good at scraping some of the barnacles off.

But here’s my problem with that: those solutions are frequently temporary. It’s like, taking a vacation from a stressful job vents the stress in the short term, but as a long-term solution, it’s total pants. The stress returns. Vapor-lock settles back in. Burnout returns as a vengeful specter — you did not exorcize that hoary spirit, but rather, merely ran away from it and forced it to find you anew in a grim otherworldly game of MARCO POLO.

And so, I seek a deeper solution.

Now, the first piece of advice I give to any writer — young or old, new or seasoned — is learn to care less. Give fewer fucks. Give some fucks! Have the appropriate amount of fucks in your fuck-basket, but know when to thrust up your middle finger and walk away from your stress like a bad-ass walking away from an EXPLODING BUILDING.

Just the same, that advice is imperfect — and incomplete.

The advice to complete that equation is:

WWYL.

And you might say, what the hell does that mean? We know what WWJD is.

What the hell is WWYL? What Would Yakov Like? What Would Yeshua Lick? Where Went Yellow Lump? Walt Whitman Yawping Loudly?

Actually, that last one is pretty good. BUT NO, not even that.

The old chestnut of writing advice is: WWYK, or, Write What You Know.

I counter with: WWYL, or Write What You Love.

Now, I’ve talked about this before, this idea of writing what you love — and I exhort you to read it, if only because I unpack it more there than here. But it’s vital to note its value in thwarting burnout, and that’s what it does for me. It’s my go-to solution. And it is a universal fix — so far! — for the burnout that threatens to gobble me up from time to time.

Here’s why: at the end of the day, you got into writing for the same reason I did. TO MAKE MOUNDS OF MONEY SO BIG THEY CAUSE A TECTONIC SHIFT AND THREATEN TO SET THE EARTH OFF ITS AXIS. Wait, no! No. Bad Chuck. Bad. Let’s rewind. You got into writing for the same reason I did: because you fucking love it, that’s why. I don’t necessarily truck with the idea that writers “need” to write, as if they’re a tribe of gibbering addicts, but I damn sure want to. It’s what I wanted to do when I was a kid. It’s what I wanted to do in college and while working dead-end jobs after college and it’s heckadang what I want to do now. But burnout makes you forget that. It knocks you off your center. Writing is work, yes. It’s a job. But it’s not a job like mucking horse stalls or doing data entry. Writing sometimes feels like digging ditches, but you have to remember: it’s you digging ditches in a magical fantasy land that you control.

You’re mucking unicorn stalls, motherfucker. Then you get to ride the unicorn after.

Go back to the source. Find the well-spring. Hell with what you know. Write what you love. What you love is an infinite cabinet of weird delights. It doesn’t just mean writing about that which delights you — write about the things that vex you. Attempt to answer questions that plague you. Our brains are like pawn shops that, over time, agglomerate cases and shelves of stuff — and that combination of objects and topics and questions is unique to us. It is our authorial voice. It is us as the auteur. We are the sum of all we have gathered to us over the years, and your stories are a most excellent way to take those ideas and fears and delights off the shelves, smash them together, and explore them. Doing this makes work feel less like work. It makes it feel like a playground. Like a sandbox. Like a vacation inside the funhouse that is your haunted head.

And it doesn’t just happen with new work — sometimes, writers are given work. You have tasks. You have freelance jobs. Fiction, non-fiction, whatever. The same thing applies: you can always find your own way into the story. Find the thing you love about the work at hand. Discover what drives you to it. What connects you to the concept and the construction. Assume that the work is a mirror and you’re staring back into it. Find not just what lives in your mind but also what lives in your heart. Then rip it out, juice that motherfucker like an orange, and slather its wet leavings all over your story.

Write stories that express who you are. Write stories that wander in places you want to go or love to visit. Answer your questions. Explore your obsessions. Tackle your fears. You know you’re hitting on something when thinking about a story gives you feels: it excites you, scares you, gives you the vertigo sensation of wondering whether or not you can really write this thing. Be honest. Look under your own fingernails and see what dirt lurks there.

If you’re finding yourself burning out — or maybe even encountering writer’s block — then it’s worth looking at what work awaits you. Are you writing what you love? Have you found the You-Shaped Door into your story? Be you. Be your voice. The story is part of you. Now all you have to do is rip it out and staple-gun it to the page.

* * *

The journey to become a successful writer is long, fraught with peril, and filled with difficult questions: How do I write dialogue? How do I build suspense? What should I know about query letters? How do I start? What the hell do I do?

The best way to answer these questions is to ditch your uncertainty and transform yourself into a Kick-Ass Writer. This new book from award-winning author Chuck Wendig combines the best of his eye-opening writing instruction — previously available in e-book form only — with all-new insights into writing and publishing. It’s an explosive broadside of gritty advice that will destroy your fears, clear the path, and help you find your voice, your story, and your audience.

April 11, 2016 / 21 Comments

Macro Monday Gives The Finger To Spring Snow

It is April.

It is spring.

It snowed this weekend.

Which, y’know. C’mon.

*points flamethrower at sky*

It didn’t stick or anything but ye gods, really? Snow? MRGH.

But — but! — I thought, maybe this is a good opportunity to take the camera out into the hoary spitting hatemist and see if I can grab some interesting photos.

The photos below are the result. A small set of them! Behold! BEHOLD.

First, though, let’s get some administrative stuff outta the way.

Tomorrow, I’ll be at Seton Hill talking about writing and life and Star Wars and really whatever the hell you want me to talk about. I will also sign books. I will also sign babies. I will also dance seductively. It is at 7pm and you should totally go and hey look here are the details. If you’re in western PA or Ohio or West Virginia or can beam down using teleport technology, I hope to see you. BE THERE OR BE SCRUTINIZED AND SHAMED.

Then — here is a review Kira Jessup did of Blackbirds, which features the sentence: “I devoured this book in less than a day.” Which is really the best thing anyone can say about my books, that they couldn’t help but be a bookish glutton, shoving it into their imagination-holes as fast as humanly possible. People often ask what book of mine they should start with, and though the answer varies wildly depending on what kinds of books you like, really the real answer is, start with Blackbirds. I think that’ll tell you if you like my work or not.

Finally, hackers have been in the news recently, what with taking hospital data hostage and all that Panama Papers stuff. If that sort of thing interests you, I suggest peeping Zer0es, my novel about hackers going up against a sinister self-aware NSA surveillance program.

NOW, THE PHOTOSET. (Click images to view on Flickr.)

April 8, 2016 / 104 Comments

Flash Fiction Challenge: Randomize Your Title And Write

Get yourself a d20 or a random number generator.

And let’s randomize a title.

Way this works is how it always works: you have two tables below, and you randomize once for each table, and then smash those two words together and TA-DA you have a title. You can add “the” in there or pluralize or make some words possessive — feel free to make other very minor tweaks to the title that results. So, in other words, you might get Dead Orchard, which you could change to The Dead Orchard or Dead Orchards… or even The Dead’s Orchard. Hell, if you even want to flip ’em the other way — The Orchard Dead — go for it.

Then, use that new title to write a story — we’ll say under 2000 words — and post that story to your blog. Then drop a link here so we can all go dig it. Due by next Friday, April 15th, noon EST.

The two tables are:

Title Word #1

Arsonist’s
Screaming
Pegasus
Haunted
Eight
Gear-tooth
Cracked
Monster’s
Carnivore
Chef’s
Venomous
Lost
Robot
Seven Days Of
After
Copper
Esmerelda’s
Dead
Binary
City of

Title Word #2

Corpse
Daughter
Locket
Debt
Dungeon
Parade
Tempest
Coast
Widget
Warning
Houses
Scandal
Flywheel
Orchard
Fang
Intelligence
Eschaton
Riot
Run
Zero

April 6, 2016 / 61 Comments

Steven Spohn: Your Last Good Day

Steven Spohn is COO of AbleGamers, a charity dedicated to helping gamers with disabilities. He’s also a hella good dude and a nice guy and a champion for a lot of people, and last week he wrote a post on his Facebook that connected with me in a really big way. Please to check it out, and if you are willing and able, consider supporting AbleGamers.

* * *

34 days ago, I lost the ability to drive my wheelchair and with it… my independence.

You see, my disease, SMA (Spinal Muscular Atrophy), is deteriorating my muscles at a very slow pace. Over time, my abilities are being torn away due to the atrophy that sets in from not using groups of muscles. The same thing would happen to you if you were to stay in bed for months or years without moving. Astronauts experience some of what SMA does to the body after being in space for long periods of time where you don’t have to fight gravity to lift your body weight.

Basically, if you don’t use your muscles, you lose them. Keep that in mind the next time you decide to skip out on leg day at the gym.

John Green captured the disturbing truth of living with a progressive disease in The Fault in Our Stars. The main protagonist, Hazel, riffs about life “There’s no way of knowing that your last good day is Your Last Good Day. At the time, it is just another good day.”

Your Last Good Day is a day like any other day. The limitations in your life have stayed the same for some time. There’s nothing different about that particular day. Until all of a sudden, like a dump truck crashing through your front door, everything changes in an instant.

For someone with a progressive disease like mine, you get many, many Last Good Days.

My Last Good Day of breathing, right before I was put on a ventilator, was when I was nine years old.

My Last Good Day of driving a wheelchair with a standard joystick controller was right after high school.

My Last Good Day of using a computer keyboard was a decade ago.

My Last Good Day of driving with a tiny joystick using my thumb was a Friday in late February.

The thing about this concept is that it’s not limited to people with disabilities. In fact, like many subjects, the real difference is that they’re amplified for me. But you’ve had your own set of Last Good Days. Maybe you just haven’t thought about it that way.

Your Last Good Days look entirely different than mine and entirely different than everyone else’s. Yours might be something like your Last Good Day of seeing without glasses, walking without pain, lifting without discomfort, or eating a piece of cake without it going straight to your hips.

Each of our lives are full of Last Good Days.

Truth is, you and I have an invisible clock above our heads. It began the second you were born, counting the number of days, hours, minutes and seconds you still have on this Earth. Even with a terminal illness, you don’t think about the clock. You’re busy living your life. The best life you can. The best way you know how.

But every once in a while life has a way of reminding you that the clock is still ticking.

On that random Friday, I was doing the same things I do every day before getting a harsh muscle spasm in my thumb that would take away my freedom. Eventually, I’ll figure out another way of operating my wheelchair, but it will never be the same. That portion of my life is done.

Rather than let it get me down, I’m choosing to use this as a reminder to live life. And I am officially inviting you to join me.

Since that day, I’ve started living life as an active participant, beginning to go after goals and reach milestones–things I’ve put off for far too long.

Okay. That’s a lie. For the first couple of days, I ate a ridiculous amount of pizza and ice cream because everything is made better by pizza and ice cream. EVERYTHING.

After THAT I started living life as an active participant, beginning to go after goals and reach milestones:

I reached out to 3 of my biggest idols and asked them to be a part of AbleGamers.

I entered a contest to co-write a novel with James Patterson.

I took a phone call with the White House.

I started learning Japanese, again and have continued the lessons every day for a month.

I emailed 3 celebrities sharing my story and hopefully beginning my inspirational, Tony Robbins wannabe career.

What do all of those things have in common? They were all scary and they were all things that I have wanted to do for a long time, but I either “never had the time” or would “do it tomorrow.”

And this is where you come in. I know your first reaction is going to feel sad for me and want to offer your support. While I appreciate the gesture, I have an alternate request.

We all have things that we have wanted to do for a long time but there’s always an excuse, a reason something doesn’t get done. Instead of posting sadness for my derelict thumb, I want you to do the following:

Post TWO (2) things you always wanted to do but never got around to starting, and promise me you’re going to start now.

Did you always want to learn how to be a better cook? Great. Look up and sign up for a class.

Have you always wanted to write? Fantastic. Open a word document tonight and begin.

Maybe it’s learning another language, emailing a celebrity you wish you could interact with, reaching out to an old friend to tell them you appreciate what they did for you, or whatever is in your heart. The point is to start TODAY.

Remember, although life is long, time is short– you never know how many Last Good Days you have left.

* * *

Steven Spohn is the COO of AbleGamers charity, award-winning author, and advocate for people with disabilities. Featured on CNN, NBC and other mainstream news outlets as an assistive technology and game accessibility expert, Steven brings all his knowledge and much more to championing for people with disabilities in the video game space as a means of defeating social isolation. When not writing or doing charity work, you can find him reading the latest sci-fi novels or cracking jokes on social media — @StevenSpohn or Facebook.com/StevenSpohn. He currently resides outside of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania with his two cats.